U.S. giving Israel running room

WirePublished: July 20, 2006 12:00AM

WASHINGTON The Bush administration is trying to hold off international pressure for an immediate halt to the Israeli assault in southern Lebanon, apparently to allow Israel a short window to do as much damage as possible to the Hezbollah guerrillas.
That puts Washington at odds with some allies and others who want a quick end to cross-border rocket attacks that have claimed more than 200 lives in a week and sent a tide of refugees fleeing Lebanon.
I want the world to address the root causes of the problem, and the root cause of the problem is Hezbollah, President Bush said Tuesday.
The administration is giving some latitude for some period of time to try to damage Hezbollah, said Samuel Berger, former White House national security adviser to President Clinton.
Geoffrey Kemp, a National Security Council adviser in the Reagan administration, said he sees a deliberate policy to keep hands off of Israel for now.
Youve got a rare moment in Washington where there is sort of bipartisan consensus that the Israelis have the right to do whatever it takes to end this threat, said Kemp, now director of regional strategic programs at the Nixon Center.
Neither Bush nor his spokesmen say that publicly, but their actions speak for themselves.
Taking a cue from Israel, the administration is distancing itself from allies calls for a cease-fire.
Bush has not called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert directly since the crisis began. Doing so would put him in the position either of asking Olmert to stop the assault or appearing to endorse it.
We have to make certain that anything that we do is going to be of lasting value, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
A cease-fire should come as soon as possible when conditions are conducive to do so, Rice said following a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who disagreed with her.
A cease-fire is imperative, he said. We have to bring it to an end as soon as possible.
Rice said she will make a peacemaking trip to the Middle East when the time is right.
When it is appropriate and when it is necessary and will be helpful to the situation, I am more than pleased to go to, she said.
Washington knows it can only run interference for so long perhaps a week before it must accede to demands from the United Nations, European allies and the few strong friends the United States can claim among Arab nations, analysts said.
That will probably mean several more days of intensive Israeli air operations, as the countrys powerful military runs down a list of what it calls terrorist targets in southern Lebanon.
The United States is also worried that if too much time passes, what is now a fight mostly contained along the Israel-Lebanon border could spread, or bring down the fragile democratic government in Beirut.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora is friendly to the United States, although far from a steadfast ally. His political power is dwarfed by Hezbollah, an Islamic militant organization with both political and guerrilla wings that is committed to Israels destruction.
Hezbollah effectively controls southern Lebanon, where it has fought an off-again, on-again border war with Israel for two decades. The United States lists Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
We have made it very clear that Israel should be allowed to defend herself, Bush said. Weve asked that as she does so, that she be mindful of the Saniora government. Its very important that this government in Lebanon succeed and survive.
Israel cannot hope to destroy or even seriously disable Hezbollah with a short bombing campaign, said Aaron David Miller, a State Department Mideast adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations who is now a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
There is no military solution to this, Miller said, adding that the Bush administration knows this and also knows that any eventual U.S. intercession must be carefully timed.
Why would you want to intercede only to be perceived as having failed?